This photo shows some of the similarities between Corona and Lübeck, a Baltic Sea port in Germany. Germany’s Baltic Sea coast is a leading candidate for where a real-world Kingdom of Corona might have been located. (Read more here.)

Corona Series No. 1: The village quays

Reason No. 312 why I love “Tangled”: There’s something wonderfully touching about a gruff sailor who works the rigging caring enough to have a lantern of his own.

Looking at these screenshots next to each other, a couple of things stick out that I did not register during the movie.

(1) The first buildings in the village were the buildings adjacent to the quay (screenshot 2), and the first boats that appear were small ones, not the big seafaring vessels that arrived later (screenshot 4). This suggests to me that the current village grew over the centuries from a fishing village into a small but seemingly important port.

(2) The town preceded the castle, meaning the town didn’t emerge as an offshoot of the castle, but more likely the opposite: The castle was the product of someone wealthy or powerful in the town. It’s more organic that way. Production designer Doug Rogers said that they didn’t want it to be “this oppresive monarchy on the hill that these people could never attain, or even feel a part of.”

If you can take your eyes of Max, see those hooks on the tops of the buildings behind him. Those sorts of buildings are all over the place in the ports of north Germany and Poland.

From “The Art of Tangled.” Great character.